Posts Tagged ‘reuse’

If you have a potato chip tube lying around, you can convert the tube into a super simple DIY snoot. All you need to do is cut an opening in the closed end that’s the size of your flash head (tip: use some duct tape to prevent it from scratching your flash).Read more…

Canon’s 50mm f/1.8 Mark II is a terrific lens for its price, but its build quality definitely leaves something to be desired. Do a quick search, and you’ll find legions of broken-hearted Canonites who had their ‘Nifty Fifty’ split into two pieces after accidentally bumping or dropping it. Flickr user tastygiant is one such Canonite, but he subsequently discovered an awesome use for the broken lens:

Being a geek, I figured I could use the broken pieces in the future, so I shelved it and bought a new 50mm 1.8 Canon lens. One day, while taking shots around my apartment, I stumbled across the broken lens again and decided to reverse the “barrel assembly” onto the front of my intact 50mm. Everything was blurry of course, but I noticed if I got very close to an object the detail came into view. After adjusting the aperture to around f5.6, I had a clear image.
It’s important to note that you should switch to Manual focusing and rotate the focusing ring to “infinity”.

Last week we featured Jason Hull’s awesome nightlights created out of old (and cheap) vintage cameras. If you’ve been dying to learn how you can make one yourself, today’s your lucky day: Hull has written up a step-by-step tutorial showing how the conversion is done. If you do attempt this project, try to find a broken camera — working ones are happiest when they’re used for photo-making!

If you have some translucent film canisters lying around, you can turn them into DIY glow sticks for light painting photography. Fuse three of them together into one translucent tube, stick a small flashlight into it, wrap it with a colored translucent sheet, and voilà, you have yourself a cheap and simple glow stick. It’s a way to add some thickness to your light painting “brush”.

Like many electronic devices, cameras often come with certain cables that are neither necessary enough to be used often nor useless enough to be tossed into the trash. A neat trick for keeping them organized and away from other cables is to stick them into toilet paper rolls. You can even go a step further by making a DIY cable organizer using a shoe box, which makes finding a particular cable a breeze.

Ties are meant to be soft and comfortable around the neck, so they’re a perfect fit for a do-it-yourself camera strap project! Besides an unwanted tie, you’ll need some sewing supposed, some ribbon for the ends, and a couple rings for attaching the strap. Check out the step-by-step tutorial over on Ecouterre.

If you ever find yourself with some unwanted negatives on your hands, you can upcycle them into creative film candle holders! All you need is a glass candle holder and some way to fix your negatives to it.

Chicago-based designer Dan Riordan woke up one morning, saw his Polaroid Land Camera 95A, and thought to himself, “I can make a lamp of out that”. So he did. Now, after several months of perfecting his build process, he’s selling these hand-crafted lamps for $150 through his Etsy store. The lamps are LED powered, last 50,000 hours without needing a new bulb, and are dimmable so you can adjust the brightness to your liking.